


let me hold you (again and again and again)

by Star_less



Category: Black Mirror, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018)
Genre: (Very Slight), Age Regression/De-Aging, Bandersnatch Spoilers, Canon Divergence, Childhood, Colin is mentioned, Flashbacks, Gen, I rewrote the rabbit scene a little bit, Not Beta Read, OP is unhappy that she killed a five year old on a train, One Shot, Rabbit ending, Reminiscing, Rewriting scene, Short One Shot, Slice of Life, Spoilers, Stefan dies, Young Stefan, five year old Stefan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 20:38:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17291000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_less/pseuds/Star_less
Summary: Stefan reunites with the two things he loves the most.His mother and his rabbit.





	let me hold you (again and again and again)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello. Bandersnatch rustled all of my jimmies. I simultaneously hate myself for choosing the rabbit ending and love it because I think it was the best ending overall (aside from the 5/5 one). This is me rewriting the rabbit ending a bit because ffs if he has to die he isn’t going to die traumatically on a train!
> 
> I also love stuff like ageplay/age regression. This story doesn’t have that since I didn’t think many people would want to see that sort of thing in this fandom, but I do play on that part when Stefan flashbacked to being a little boy. That’s why the AR tag is there.
> 
> Enjoy. Or hit backspace, if not!

Dad kept Rabbit.

In the same place. In the same place as he always had.

Stupid git. Dad kept Rabbit because he seemed to think Stefan was still as much a dope as he was when he was five. Perhaps he thought Stefan would still take the goddamned thing to bed if he had a chance. And so it stayed gone.

But Stefan knew where it was. He... he didn’t know how, but it had come to him. In, in a dream, it had come to him. And as he crept silently down the hall with his bare toes bunching into the wool of the carpet like he was nothing but a child who was racing to his mummy after a bad dream, Stefan felt... deja vu. An awful sense, as though he had done this before, as though it wasn’t his feet moving across the carpet—yes even though he could feel the ticklish wool dragging itself across his soles—but as though he was being enticed down the hallway, pushed, unable to stop himself.

He kept it in a safe. Dad, that was. He kept Rabbit in a safe. All these years. Looking back now it did seem to Stefan as though it was overkill. Was Dad really that scared of the damned thing turning him gay? Well... look at how well that plan turned out. 1-0 to you, Dad. Hiding Rabbit didn’t turn him into a flaming homosexual after all. It turned him into a flaming homosexual with an anxiety disorder and daddy issues, that’s what it did.

Laughing hollowly to himself not out of joy but mirthlessness Stefan turned toward the safe and squinted against the jarring brightness of the keys. Strange, because to some it may have seemed as though there were endless possibilities but only two seemed to collide in Stefan’s head, collide and whirl and slam into each other as though he had a bumper car track in his head, or something. He couldn’t seem to get a solid grip on either of them — they floated somewhere just out of his reach where he was aware that they were there but the second he glanced at the keypad he couldn’t make them flow out into his fingers, no, his fingers were poised and unmoving and so the safe remained shut.

TOY  
PAC  
TOY  
PAC  
T O Y  
P A C. . .

His fingers itched to press something and he watched as his own hand rose, trembling, to punch the three letter code into the keypad. Oh yes, that was right, it was not he who chose what fucking code to enter it was The Powers That Be. _Pick TOY, you bastards_ , he willed silently because there was no way he was rewinding through this scene all over again... because, yes, that was the other thing; sometimes it was like Groundhog fucking Day and The Powers That Be seemed to decide to cycle him through the same thing over and over, wake up go to Tuckersoft deny their proposal meet Colin jump off the balcony get high flush the drugs what the fuck is Netflix and on and on and on over and over. He tried his hardest to change things himself. When Colin cupped his face and the two of them got high and got even higher off of one another, he wriggled. Wrenched. Tried to reach out and press his lips to Colin’s. But no. It was always the same.  
‘Let me show you.’  
Oh, of course sometimes just one thing would change like, hey, perhaps he’ll wake up tomorrow and not jump off the fucking balcony like a twat? Of course, that would mean Colin was going over instead but fucking hell he always seemed to reappear eventually. Maybe he was right about the whole Pac-Man thing all along. 

Or maybe it was the LSD.

On second thoughts, it was probably the LSD.

He watched as his own fingers pressed T O Y without him even thinking about it, at some point while he was thinking about Pac-Man and LSD. His breath caught in his throat, all hot and ugly with disbelief. Fucking hell. They’ve done something good for once.

Rabbit was there.  
Squashed into the safe like a corpse in a too-small coffin.  
Typical Dad, dull fucking sod, hiding it with a password as easily guessable as ‘TOY’.  
For a moment Stefan teetered on a thin invisible precipice, breath baited, as though he was waiting for The Powers to decide that he wasn’t going to take Rabbit after all, that they’re going to pull him to the edge and then snap the safe shut or— or Dad is going to race down the hallway and bawl at him. Fuck him, the thought came into his head like a venomous dart, but as Stefan reached out and pulled the stuffed animal into his embrace, free from the confines of the safe, he suddenly felt as small as he was when Rabbit was taken away... when Dad was still so big and so scary. He wanted so badly in that moment to put Rabbit back but he is frightened and so...

Stefan gave the soft toy a gentle squeeze and lifted him against his cheek because that was what he was so used to doing even as a child. He sniffs the ear. The ear was his favourite, flopped over his nose at nighttime and in his mouth for half the day.  
(As a kid, not now, he’s not a fucking weirdo.)  
But he sniffs all the same and smells... dust. Dust from Rabbit’s too-small coffin, smoke trapped in every stitch from when Dad took him away and— if Stefan concentrated hard enough — perfume, Mum’s perfume, all floral and delicate; long gone now, worn with age, just a whiff of a petal there.  
Mum.  
The comfort that floods his body is instant; makes him high in a different way to Colin, sends warmth and happiness through his body that feels as slippery and as loving as velvet. ‘There we are, Darling,’ coos a soft voice, a woman’s voice, and Stefan doesn’t even need to look for where it is coming from because it’s Mum, it’s Mum and he can’t forget a voice like hers (even though he almost has because it’s been so long.) 

Suddenly, he is a chubby cheeked five year old again and Mummy is sat on his rumpled Paddington Bear duvet in the dim light of his bedroom. ‘There we are, Darling,’ she coos and strokes the tears away from where they are collecting on his cheeks. ‘You found Rabbit. Rabbit is going to eat up all your bad dreams.’  
Stefan comes back to himself for a moment and wonders if Rabbit would even attempt to eat the LSD-induced nightmare creatures that had ended up plaguing his dreams. Huh. He shakes it off and squeezes the toy again. Mummy comes back and then he is small. ‘Sleep now, my darling,’ Mummy requests, carding her fingers through his wispy baby hair. He cuddles down in his duvet which Mummy pulls up tight around him. She kisses his cheek and he breathes in her smell. He’s not sure what it is, but it smells nice, like Mummy is laying in a field of flowers. His eyes are closing now, just tiny slits as he watches Mummy kiss him once more and soak up the look of sleepy adoration on his face. Mummy is gone and Stefan sleeps.

“Stefan? Stefan, wake up... Stefan?”

I don’t... I don’t understand. He was talking to me just a second ago— he closed his eyes... just... just for a second...”

(He didn’t even have time to put Rabbit under his bed, where he belonged.)

**Author's Note:**

> On second thoughts, I’m not really sure what this is. Just a kinda... wordy dump. I hope you enjoyed it all the same.  
> Please comment and kudos if you enjoyed this as this keeps me doing what I love. 
> 
> Peep the implied Colin/Stefan. I’d like to write some of that, too, one day.


End file.
